Bo Gets Life, Now Lives for Revenge

By Adam Minter -
Sep 22, 2013

On Sunday morning, at the
conclusion of Bo Xilai’s sentencing in Jinan, China, the court -
- which had been tweeting the proceedings to Sina Weibo, China’s
leading microblogging platform -- tweeted one last photo without
comment. In it Bo, newly sentenced to life in prison for abuse
of power, bribery and embezzlement, stands with his wrists
extended outward, displaying the handcuffs that bind them.
Posing on either side of him are two towering bailiffs with
their white-gloved hands placed awkwardly but precisely on his
shoulders and just above those wrists. They, in turn, are
flanked by two smaller cops who look as if they’d prefer to be
anywhere but Jinan. It’s a clumsy but unmistakable tableau of
control, and it soon was picked up by media outlets across
China.

But what’s most remarkable about the image is Bo’s broad
smile as he’s posed and photographed beneath the bench. That
grin is directed upward, presumably to the presiding judge, Wang
Xuguang, whose verdict was almost certainly written and approved
at the highest levels of power in Beijing by individuals --
including President Xi Jinping -- whom Bo has known for most of
his life, and whom he had hoped to best politically. In Bo’s
amused and mocking expression, one can see his contempt for the
judge and the proceedings, which everyone in China has long
known were a political charade.

Political Questions

To be sure, Bo’s five-day trial had all of the trappings of
a proceeding held according to the rule of law. The defendant
was allowed to cross-examine (and insult) witnesses; the court
generated transcripts posted to the Internet via microblogs; the
judges wore impressive robes. But a guilty verdict was pre-determined when Bo was detained and stripped of his posts and
Communist Party membership in spring 2012. The only remaining
questions were political: how much spectacle might be allowed,
and what sentence would be rendered.

For Bo’s political rivals, little could be left to chance
when it came to spectacle. He remains a wildly popular figure in
Chongqing, and among Chinese enamored of his ruthless crackdown
on the city’s criminal syndicates during his five-year tenure as
Party Secretary. Even after his arrest, and revelations of
bribe-taking and an attempted cover-up to protect his wife from
murder charges, he maintained his standing among a public long-accustomed to far more serious charges against lesser officials.

Indeed, the $3.6 million in bribes that Bo was accused of
hauling in is barely respectable compared to the $10.5 million
in bribes that Liu Zhijun, China’s former rail minister was
convicted in July of accepting. Few of Bo’s supporters would
deny that he’s a scoundrel -- just not as bad as the others.
Even better, he -- unlike his political superiors in Beijing --
had managed what appeared to be a successful anti-corruption
drive in Chongqing.

Those circumstances alone argued against an unpopular,
perhaps inflammatory death sentence that at least some of his
political rivals surely hoped he’d be given. Add in the deep
connections that Bo -- son of one of China’s revolutionary
founders -- has to China’s Communist aristocracy, and it was
guaranteed that he and his family would be sheltered from harsh,
common justice. Nonetheless, Xi Jinping -- a contemporary of
Bo’s, and also a member of one of China’s revolutionary families
-- obviously had no interest in seeing the charismatic,
attention- grabbing Bo mouth off freely in China while Xi
attempted to rule. At a minimum, Bo was guaranteed to land a
sentence that extended past Xi’s likely ten-year term as
president, and past the current age of eligibility for the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee that Bo aspired to join.

Perfectly Tuned

Xi also needed to show not only that he was capable of
standing up to Bo’s partisans, but that he is serious in his
crackdown on corruption. From this perspective, Bo’s concurrent
sentences of life for corruption, 15 years for embezzlement, and
seven years for abuse of power, are perfectly tuned to meet Xi’s
political needs. For all of his friends and fan club, Bo Xilai
won’t be around to overshadow the dour Xi’s presidency.

Still, for all of the political expediency built into Bo’s
sentence, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll spend his life behind
bars; under Chinese law he’ll be eligible for parole in 13
years. By then, he’ll be in his mid-seventies, and many of his
patrons and his enemies will have passed on. No doubt he’ll
relish the opportunity to leave prison and cast his scornful
gaze on his former comrades in Beijing, rather than wasting it
on provincial court officials with whom he has no real quarrel.
Bo, ever a patient and calculating politician, is probably
already counting the days.

(Adam Minter, the Shanghai correspondent for the World View
blog, is writing “Junkyard Planet,” a book on the global
recycling industry.)

To contact the writer of this article:
Adam Minter at ShanghaiScrap@gmail.com